TPCP, Using Media, and Lobbying

I’m bad about keeping a blog. Since no one reads it anyway it becomes little more than a journal.  But I need to follow up on an opportunity I was given presenting a short bit to the current Arkansas Department of Health Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Program (TPCP) Grantees at their Quarterly meeting at Pulaski Tech recently. The bulk of the day was an Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights training by their Southern States Regional Consultant, Onjewel Smith.  

My presentation was little more than a combination of a perspective of how public health has always been short sighted, when it came to dealing with the tobacco industry from as far back as the Frank Statement, and a synopsis of a paper I delivered at the 2009 ASH Wales Conference in Cardiff, Wales.  The Cardiff presentation was an overview of successes Tobacco Free Marion County had in reducing BRFSS adult smoking rate numbers making use of a coordinated and comprehensive public relations campaign.  CTFA’s Katherine Donald suggested that since my gig came while everyone was eating their boxed lunches I was the Keynote Speaker.  I told her that if I ever got around to writing a C.V. it would be.

Dr. Gary Wheeler, acting medical head of TPCP and an inaugural graduate of the Clinton School of Public Service, I cannot brag on Gary enough, helped clarify my language about a Fayetteville bar owner’s complaint to the state Ethics Board.  Gary shared that calling attention to using public funds to lobby was a tobacco industry ploy  used against federal tobacco free efforts in the 90s.  Regardless, it was Huckabee in 2003 who said he wanted tobacco grantees to comply with the “letter as well as the spirit of the law” regarding tobacco prevention.  I quote this because he used the same language not 3 weeks later complaining about the legislature recessing rather than adjourning. Huckabee’s actions easily checked progress in tobacco prevention in Arkansas to this day, not excluding his 2006 exemption riddled Arkansas Clean Indoor Air Law. It really is an embarrassment that Huckabee has any kind of national stage in the media today much less a political voice.

But it does explain the murmured response among grant administrators and grantees when I assured them that they could lobby within semantics.  Hell, I encouraged them to lobby.  CDC Best Practices are all about policy change.  And my emphasis on semantics was exactly the same advice Lynda Lehing gave grantees in 2003.  There has to be some government employee/ bureaucrat mantra about safety in ignorance. At any rate it was Huckabee’s 2003 call to inaction that was the major prompt for me to speak out and use what I knew about public relations and the media as a voice once removed from Tobacco Free Marion County.  And like Ms. Smith inferred, tobacco prevention advocates often find themselves alone in the wilderness.  TFMC was no exception.  Using the media was a way of making the coalition seem much larger than it actually was.  And it can be for any tobacco prevention advocacy today as well. 

At some point in the near future I’ll put audio to my presentation and put it on line.

Handsel Art

7 October 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

contact J.R. Few

handselart@marioncounty.com

or 870-427-1365

Local Advocate Speaks in Wales

Tobacco prevention in Marion County, Arkansas acquired international note last week with local activist, J.R. Few’s presentation at the second annual ASH Wales’ Communicate, Collaborate, Celebrate Conference in Cardiff, Wales October 5 & 6. Speaking during the “Engaging Smokers” workshop, Few shared insight and successes from work as volunteer media coordinator for Tobacco Free Marion County between 2002 until 2009.

“It was an honor and a privilege to be invited to this event. The challenges to the tobacco industry are truly global. We get caught up in our own local mediocrity and often forget that the world at large is where the tobacco industry profits most.”

Few is creative director for his family’s business, Handsel Art and Advertising. Handsel Art has offered to the public quality art, advertising, public relations, and photography since 1971 and currently works to challenge a predatory rogue industry with tobacco prevention activists in Arkansas and around the globe.

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The primary sponsors for the event were Pfizer and McNeil and because of this the conference is subject to the same critique the World Conference on Smoking or Health in Mumbai received. The fashion in which we engage the tobacco pandemic should be evidence based. But the slippery aspect of saying something like that is that the paradigm from which one begins shapes the questions and evidence one seeks. It is a very good question to ask if having these corporate sponsors determines the flavor of a conference. And these particular sponsors are involved quite directly with profit from using their products to treat nicotine addiction, not control and prevent the prevalence and spread of nicotine.

That said, the gathering was certainly a cessation based perspective but with a serious effort at broadening the scope. I got the impression that tobacco prevention advocates were beginning to feel the frustrations that they may have maxed out the utility of a certain direction of effort.

The challenge to tobacco in the UK has been a decade of the National Health Service focusing on cessation. This of course couldn't make the industry any happier because they are more aware than anyone how difficult, even impossible, overcoming nicotine addiction can be. However, this seems to be on the cusp of change. It made my presentation about adhering to best practices and strict media tie in very appropriate. They are only now getting the knack of their foe being the industry itself. John Tilley, speaking for NHS, noted that a new national tobacco policy was imminent. The last session we attended outlined the 2008 report of the Tobacco Control National Support Team suggesting an evidence based approach much like the CDC Best Practices for engaging the industry. Wales itself is seeking a unified national tobacco policy. This conference, only the second for ASH Wales I believe, is part of that effort. In many ways Arkansas is far ahead of the game, especially for Wales. And even the UK too.

My gig actually went over pretty well. I'm large and loud and had lots of colorful slides. Additionally my "Kill 'em all, let god sort it out" approach to the tobacco industry was fairly novel for much of the audience. And the numbers I was able to bring from our efforts in Marion County were a pretty straight forward approach to successful tobacco control. But we know from experience in Arkansas that doesn't mean anybody is listening. Additionally, the English have the same difficulties w ignorant politicians pandering to the lowest common denominator and eating out of the hands of the industry whether they know it or not.

It truly was an enlightening honor and privilege to attend the ASH Wales Conference and speak to so many dedicated advocates. I believe we made some friends with whom collaboration and communication will have a positive challenge to the tobacco industry. Might be a little early to celebrate.